Music Ruiners are a special breed of lousy marketer. I’m talking about the people who pick songs to use in commercials here. They take someone’s art and repurpose it for profit. It’s repulsive.
In case you couldn’t tell from my post containing Hoot’s Insomniac Playlist for Feeling Feels, music is a very important part of my life. It’s pretty much been my one constant companion. It makes my highs higher and my lows tolerable. So, to see music stripped of meaning and treated carelessly breaks my heart.
I discovered The Velvet Underground my sophomore year of college and it was love at first listen. I loved their sound, their lyrics, their content, their vibe, their fascinating history – all of it. One of my favorite songs of theirs is Heroin. Yes, it is about heroin. It isn’t advocating for the use of heroin, but it isn’t really speaking out against it either. As far as I understand it, it’s just about a person who chooses to do heroin. The lyrics describe why he uses and how it feels. Throughout the entire song, there is a drum that mimics a heartbeat. When Lou Reed sings about taking the drug, that beat quickens along with the pace of the song until you feel like your own heart might explode. And then the pulse slows again as he comes down from his high. I highly recommend you give Heroin a listen. Like it or not, you’ll respect it. It is truly an experience and I’m amazed by it every time I hear it.
And so, imagine my frustration when I heard this song that I love used as background music in a car commercial. There are layers upon layers to appreciate in Heroin, but they stripped it down to only the guitar and one line. The line they used was “I have made a big decision”. Some idiot heard that and thought to him/herself, “great, buying a car is a big decision, so this is totally appropriate”. If you know the song though, you know that the complete line is “I have made a big decision, I’m gonna try to nullify my life”. Not quite the same is it? Kind of dark, isn’t it? Kind of grossly inappropriate to use to sell SUVs, isn’t it? What a shame.
The exception to Music Ruiners is Volkswagen. In the 90’s, Volkswagen ran a series of commercials that celebrated the wonderful connection between music and driving. They picked excellent music and focused the commercials more on the euphoric feeling of driving while listening to a great song than on the car itself. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but that’s how I first heard about Nick Drake, who is another of my favorite musicians. Volkswagen succeeded because they celebrated the music and the experience of listening instead of using a song out of context and stripping it of its meaning because it has a catchy melody.
Nietzsche observed that without music, life would be a mistake. He wrote that “The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart”. I couldn’t agree more. And so marketers, let’s leave the sacred alone, ok?